Resized to perfectly fit interface's elements so there is no need for the game to resize them to fit in buttons and frames. As a result all new pictograms look very sharp and clear in the game (except those which are used in more than one place and with various scale). Here are some examples:

Unfortunately most of other interface elements are not available for modding. There are some of interface's resources present in "images\ui\chrome" folder which are not used by game (Or at least not where it was expected). Another issue is that the game sometimes uses same resourcses for different elements of interface (for example "firepower.png" is used both for military ships and crash research icons). This fact limits design choices for the interface improvement. So looking forward to modding improvements in DW's future releases.

NEW CURSORS SET

14 all new "pixelart" cursors.

RESTYLED SHIP GRAPHICS

The ship restyling has several purposes in mind:

1. Make ships look clearer and distinctive on various bright and dark backgrounds during gameplay. 2. Quick identification of all controllable state ships. 3. Quick identification of military ship types. 4. More eye candy look.

I know that game already has good ship type identification signs such as triangles for military ships, rectangles for construction ships and so on, but I believe average human eye is much more responsive to colours than to shapes. So I decided to use different colour outlines to make it even easier to quickly identify ships during a gameplay.

Additionally, there is an alternative shipset for those who prefer ships with black outlines only:

IMPROVED PLANET GRAPHICS

Continental planets

Desert planets

Ice planets

Marshyswamp planets

Oceanic planets

Volcanic planets

Barrenrock planets

IMPROVED STAR GRAPHICS

Main sequence star

Red Giant

Super Giant

White Dwarf

Neutron Star

NEW LANDSCAPES

Original artworks were not created by me but were searched and taken from the net, mostly from Terragen's gallery. I just resized, framed and colour graded them. So all kudos and credits go to their creators.

Landscapes are resized and adjusted to perfectly fit game's interface.

Unfortunately, at the present moment DW has a hard-coded limit to use only few first images. So it uses only 4 images for continental planets (+1 from forest folder), 3 for desert, marshyswamp and ice planets, 2 for volcanic and oceanic planets. Hopefully this will be fixed in "Shadows" release, but for now most of these landscapes wouldn't appear in the game.

If you want some particular landscapes to be present in the game, please rename them to use first few numbers. For example, use names from "landscape_0" up to "landscape_3" for continental planets.

Continental planet's landscapes

Desert planet's landscapes

Ice planet's landscapes

Marshyswamp planet's landscapes

Oceanic planet's landscapes

Volcanic planet's landscapes

IMPROVED RUINS

For the ruins I used amazing and myserious paintings of Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński.

v1.0 + Upgraded original graphics for all planets except frozen gas giants & gas giants. + Upgraded original graphics for all stars on a system zoom level. + Upgraded original galaxy backdrop.

v2.0 + Upgraded original ship graphics. + Integrated updated version of "Surrealistic ruins" mod. + Integrated updated version of "Beautiful landscapes" mod. - Made the atmosphere slightly visible even on a dark side of planets. - Fixed a shadow artifact appeared when a planet overlaps another planet.

v2.1 + Added 9 new cursors.

v2.2 + Added 5 more new cursors and updated most of previously released cursors.

v2.3 + Added 53 new & refined pictograms for game's interface. - Most of the cursors are redesigned or refined. - New version of galaxy backdrop.

v2.4 - Improved planet graphics, including new atmospheric effect. - Added an alternative version of shipset without colour outlines. - Updated version of galaxy backdrop. Slightly redesigned and significantly desaturated to improve contrast between backdrop and active objects on the map.

I've always been a "gameplay over graphics" type of person, but the lots of little modifications you make sure do make a massive difference, and they have such a polished feel to them. I think Erik should consider getting you to help out with Shadows. No offence to the art team, but Martian's artwork is simply superb.

I guess the problem here is about how game itself reads files. Ether "1001" is too high number for game to "see" it. Or maybe its because of gap between numbers. Just for a test try renaming it to the consequent number after last one already used (0024 for example).

Can you break this up into 2 or 3 downloads. I have fast broadband and it isn't a problem for me, but for some of our community broadband might not be available and a 120mb DL will take them a long time.

I wish the game's engine allowed closer zooming. I wanted to make ships size smaller. IMHO in vanilla their scale is too big compared to planets, spaceport and stations. But if I make them say 2 times smaller it would be difficult to see and identify them clearly with current zooming limit.

quote:

Can you break this up into 2 or 3 downloads. I have fast broadband and it isn't a problem for me, but for some of our community broadband might not be available and a 120mb DL will take them a long time.

To those who already tried this mod. I would like to know what do you think about ship restyling? Is this a step in right direction? Also what do think about making ships (and maybe stations too) smaller compared to planets? Maybe about 2 times smaller than now?

Hmmmm... Thanks for pointing this out, Ashbery. I didn't pay much attention, but looks like you are right. That explains why there are only 4 images at maximum in original landscapes folders... It's sad. Looks almost like a bug to me. I hope Elliot will remove this limit in Shadows. Otherwise my landscape mod is half in vain..

Yes, you were completely right! I've made some testing. I used editor to make 80-100 continental planets. I checked them and for all of them game used only first 4 images from continental landscape folder and only one image from "forest" folder!!!

I did same testing for all of colonizable type of planets and things are even worse. From my understanding the game uses only original amount of images. So for continental planets it uses 4 images (plus one from forest folder). For ice, marshyswamp and desert planets only 3. But for oceanic and volcanic it's only two images! I really hope this will be improved in Shadows.

1. Make ships look clearer and distinctive on various bright and dark backgrounds during gameplay. 2. Quick identification of all controllable state ships. 3. Quick identification of military ship types. 4. More eye candy look.